Why did Congress declare war on Great Britain in 1812?

Printed Page 272

CHRONOLOGY

1803

  • – United States is warned not to ship war goods to Britain or France.

1807

  • – Chesapeake incident.
  • – Embargo Act.

1808

  • – James Madison is elected president.

1809

  • – Treaty of Fort Wayne.
  • – Non-Intercourse Act.

1811

  • – Battle of Tippecanoe.

1812

  • – United States declares war on Great Britain.

1813

  • – Tecumseh dies at battle of the Thames.

1814

  • – British attack Washington City.
  • – Treaty of Ghent.
  • – Hartford Convention.

1815

  • – Battle of New Orleans.

JEFFERSON EASILY RETAINED the presidency in the election of 1804, trouncing Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina. A more difficult problem was the threat of war with both France and Britain, which led Jefferson to try a novel tactic, an embargo. His successor, James Madison, continued with a modified embargo, but his much narrower margin of victory over Pinckney in the election of 1808 indicated growing dissatisfaction with the Jefferson-Madison handling of foreign policy.

Madison broke with Jefferson on one very domestic matter: He allowed his gregarious wife, Dolley Madison, to participate in serious politics. Under James Madison’s leadership, the country declared war in 1812 on Britain and on a confederacy of Indians in the old Northwest. The two-year war cost the young nation its White House and its Capitol, but victory was proclaimed at the end nonetheless.

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The Burning of Washington City
This British engraving celebrates the British army’s attack on Washington, D.C., in 1814. Disciplined troops control the street in front of the burning White House; the dome of the blazing Capitol is on the right. Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library.